


Broken Mirrors

by poplocknsonnet



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Mulan - All Media Types
Genre: Author has no idea how the military works, F/M, Korean-American Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21786148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poplocknsonnet/pseuds/poplocknsonnet
Summary: Selective Service is just that thing that you sign up for to get your financial aid. Sure, as a trans woman it's a kick in the gut and more than a little invalidating that the government expects her to do it, but that's all it is, right? It's not like she's going to get drafted, right?Modern AU of Disney's Mulan with a trans, Korean-American protagonist.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! This is a little more of an experimental story for me; it's less shippy, for one thing, and maybe a little more biographical. I want to clear up some choices that I've made:
> 
> 1) Hwa Min-Ju is, obviously, not the same name as Fa Mulan. Part of this story is about Min-Ju's identity as an Asian American and particularly as a queer Asian American. That being said, I only have expertise of my own lived experiences and wasn't comfortable with the idea of writing a Chinese-American POV, so Fa Mulan becomes Hwa Min-Ju. I think the cultural appropriation of the legend of Fa Mulan is kind of icky, but it's less so than the idea of trying to write a very personal story about a culture that I'm not from. 
> 
> 2) I originally conceived of this story as a re-telling of Mulan in the original time period with Mulan as a trans woman, but I felt like that got too bogged down in details that I didn't want to have to explain and the setting was a problem - I feel real valence with the Asian American experience, the Asian experience not as much. So the setting has been re-timed.
> 
> 3) That said, I know absolutely nothing about the military and about what boot camp/basic training are like. So I hope you can give me that artistic license; this is more of an adjacent universe to ours. The legal reasoning behind getting Min-Ju drafted is also fuzzy and hand-wavey, but a) it's based partially on real fears about litigation regarding trans identities (extrapolated from, for example, bathroom bills) and b) necessary to get the story moving.
> 
> There's a lot left to this story, so I hope you can bear with me as I juggle my academic writing with this!

The letter doesn’t look any different from any of the junk letters that Min-Ju receives. There’s no stamp on it that says, “Life changing news inside!” (although to be fair, if there were, she’d ignore it too) and so she files it with the rest of the junk, with the credit card offers and auto-loan offers that are sent to someone who can barely drink. And that's where it stays, safe and unopened, for five days, before her mother does her weekly round-up, opening each piece of junk mail over dinner and carefully tutting over the merits of this sweepstakes, or whether they’ll be able to use that set of coupons.

Dinner is _kimchi-jjigae_ , one of her favorites, and so it takes her a moment to notice that her mother’s normal rhythm is gone - the tear of an opened envelope, the click of her tongue, the deposition of the contents into the keep pile or the trash pile. “Mom?” she asks as she selects a piece of heavily spiced _kimchi_ from her bowl of stew, “What’s up?”

Her mom and dad are staring at her from across the table, her least favorite expression on both their faces, that mixture of disappointment, shame, and fear. It catches her guts in a tight fist.

“You said it was a zero percent chance,” her mother says, her voice fragile like once-baked clay.

“What?” Min-Ju deposits the food into her mouth and reaches out to grab the letter from her mother’s hands. The _kimchi_ turns wooden in her mouth, and she chews and chews, too preoccupied with the letter that says that she’s just been _drafted_ to swallow.

“I- it’s supposed to be,” she says eventually, “Signing up for selective service is just a formality, basically everyone born, y’know, does it for- for financial aid, and-”

There’s been a sensation, it’s varied in intensity, but it’s always, always been there, that life just isn’t fair. It’s been there since her first day of school when she didn’t understand why the other girls didn’t want to play with her on the playground, since the day she was able to put words to why she felt so different from everyone else, since the first time she was able to say those words to her parents, and since they eventually decided to speak to her again afterwards. But it’s never been this bad, roaring in her ears and rushing past her vision, threatening to overwhelm, to shatter the thin, brittle veneer of “okay” that she’d managed to coat her life in.

“It’s the new administration, there’s the new rules about people like me, they’re- they’re looking at birth certificates for this,” she said helplessly, gesturing at the letter that had a name - the wrong name, a name that she hadn’t had to answer to in years and years - on it. The sight of it, in official print, atop orders to report to Nevada, of all places, is so, so heavy. 

Her parents seem to have found their voices again. Their chopsticks are on the table in front of them, the meal forgotten for the family crisis which has arisen. 

“I won’t have my daughter join the military,” her dad says, and it’s almost enough to break her heart, because he’s been as supportive as he knows how to be, he has, but he _never_ calls her “daughter” like that, with that much heat, that much ferocity.

“There’s plenty of women in the army,” she says, electing to soldier on - _ha_ \- instead of crying, “It’s 2019. I mean, equal rights and all that, right? And if they can do it, you know-”

“Min-Ju,” he says. She’s never heard her name in his mouth like this, hasn’t heard him this taut, tense, this ready to fight or fly since she first came out, and that wasn’t her name then anyway, not really. 

“Canada,” her mom says, and it’s a couple of moments before Min-Ju’s brain catches up to her ears.

“What,” she asks dumbly, because processing what she’s heard and understanding it seem to be two entirely different functions.

“Canada,” her mom says again, “We’ll move to Canada.” She’s using her No-Argument voice, the one that usually says things like, “That’s enough X-Box for today,” or “Drink your _hanyak_ , do you know how expensive it is?” or “Min-Ju, help your father bring in the groceries.” Hearing it used to say something so big feels like the time her class took a field trip to the Natural History Museum and she saw the same cabinet that sat in her parents’ bedroom tucked away in a poorly lit display in the Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples.

“I- what? We can’t just move to Canada. What about college?”

“What about college? You can’t go to college if you’re dead.”

The conviction in her mom’s voice takes Min-Ju off guard, nudges her into defending the situation in a way that, out of the heat of the moment, she would never. “What are you talking about? I wouldn’t die, I mean, it’s super unlikely I’d ever even see combat.”

Her mom’s reply is quick and sharp. “And it was unlikely that you’d be drafted, isn’t that what you told us? It’s not just about combat - your father and I, we read the news, you know. Every week it feels like another- another girl like you shows up dead. You think we don’t worry? You think we don’t see that? How can you do that to us? How can you put us through that?”

“How can I-” This isn’t an unfamiliar argument, but that doesn’t make it hurt less, doesn’t make her mom’s inability - unwillingness? - to understand hurt less. “How can I what, _umma_? Be who I am and live my life? How can you act like you’re the- I’m the victim here, I’m the one who’s been drafted, I’m the one who had to- who was born-”

“Canada,” her dad agrees, and when Min-Ju whips her head around to stare at him, mouth open in shock, she sees him nodding as if her mom has been making perfect sense for the last few minutes and not spouting absolute _insanity_. “I have a cousin in Vancouver; we can stay with her until we get more settled.”

“Vancouver is really far from New Jersey,” is all she can think to say, and of course it’s not enough, it’s not even close, but when her dad gets like this, nothing can ever be enough. 

It’s not - and she can’t stress this enough - it’s not that she _wants_ to join the army. But between being Asian and being born with the body that she was, there’s something about the idea that she can’t - shouldn’t - do something that sets her on _fire_ . There was an episode of Chef’s Table that she saw a few years ago that stuck with her. “ _Kuyashii,_ ” Chef Nakayama had noted, describing her experience as a woman, a gay woman, a gay Asian woman, in the kitchen, “ _I’m gonna prove to you that I can get this done._ ”

Which, okay, isn’t a good reason to want to join the army. It’s not even a bad reason to join the army. It probably hovers somewhere between an awful reason and a fucking terrible reason to join the army, but it’s not really just about the spite.

Because as mad as she is at her mom and her insistence that they, her parents, are the real victims here, as much as the thought of pretending to be the man that the government thinks she is terrifies her, it’s about the fact that it isn’t fair that her parents should have to leave the country that they’d fought so hard to get a foothold in on her account. It’s about the fact that her parents have always seen her as a burden, a liability, something to be worked around, not with, and the fact that this time, they’re _right_. 

And so that night, after her parents have fallen asleep, it feels like there’s only really one choice for her to make as she rustles through the kitchen trash for her draft letter, its corner a little translucent with grease, and sneaks through a half-packed room for the door, carrying a bag of clothing and the cash she’d stored in the _maneki-neko_ that a misguided ex-boyfriend had bought for her, thinking it was Korean (or maybe that she was Japanese?) that she’d kept anyway for some reason. 

It’s - call it luck, or destiny, or something else - but it’s at least a coincidence that the ticket that she’d been sent to take her from Newark to Los Angeles is for the next morning. She arrives early enough that the airport is quiet; there’s no line to get through security, which is a good thing - her driver’s license doesn’t match the name on the ticket and while that isn’t insurmountable, it’s not something she wants to do in full view of other passengers.

Things go smoothly enough, and she makes it to her gate with time to spare. She spends a few minutes buying a cup of coffee, occupying herself by hemming and hawing over her order as if she doesn’t already know what she’s getting, what she always gets. But with her drink (almond milk iced latte) purchased, she settles in to wait for her flight with nothing to do but think, something she’s been steadfastly avoiding for the past few hours.

She blocks her parents’ numbers. She won’t be able to call or text them while in basic and she doesn’t want to hear from them while she can still turn back.

She used to wish, back when it was particularly bad, that her family would relocate, that her mother would get that big break that she’d been hoping for for as long as Min-Ju could remember, and that the Hwas would pack their bags and move away to a new city, a new state, a new somewhere where who she’d been wasn’t on the tip of every tongue and who she is could be seen instead.

This is nothing like that at all.

Other than a graduation trip to Boston with her best friend, she’s never been further than Brooklyn. It seems entirely surreal that by this time the next day, within just twenty-four hours, she’ll be across the country on an army base, drafted, enlisted. It seems surreal that by this time the next day, she won’t be herself anymore, that she won’t even have her name, the one that she’d picked out so carefully, one of the first things that her dad helped with.

A voice finally pipes in over the intercom. “Now boarding flight number 327, direct service to Los Angeles.”

She sleeps most of the way there, tormented by dreams of public showers.

The plane touches down in LAX and the first thing she notices is how dry it is. It’s not much hotter here, but the New Jersey air was slick with humidity, clinging to skin and clothing, a constant reminder of her connection to the world. In contrast, the aridity of Los Angeles makes her feel minuscule and alone.

She hates it.

She ducks into a bathroom stall to change her clothing and there’s a voice in the back of her head that reminds her that this might be the last time she can use the correct bathroom for a long, long time. 

The pants are baggy, looser than anything she’s worn in years, and cinched high - just below her navel - they do a good job disguising her figure. And honestly - it isn’t fucking fair, because she worked hard for her hips, spent hours praying to every god that her admittedly awful elementary school had taught her about, praying that it wasn’t too late and that her hips hadn’t fused yet, that they’d grow and swell beyond the horrible, parallel lines that boxed her in, leaving bits of her folded over and tucked away and out of sight, like a photograph stuffed into a wrongly-shaped frame.

She pulls an old Yankees cap low over her face, pushing up as much of her hair into it as she can. It’s a short train ride into Los Angeles proper, not long enough for the dry heat to get any more comfortable but long enough for doubt to begin to gnaw at the edges of her consciousness.

She pulls out her phone and feigns a conversation, trying to practice dropping the register of her voice. “No, _umma_ ,” she says, “I got here fine, yeah, no, the trip was okay. Yeah, I slept through most of it, you know me.”

The voice comes back more easily than she expected, and it’s gratifying and sickening all at once. By the time she disembarks in the city, she’s hit a groove that’s familiar. She hates how brassy, how low her voice is, how it buzzes in her chest instead of higher up in her throat, her head. 

She navigates to the bus station and approaches a teller. “Hello, ma’am!” the oddly cheery attendant says, “Where are we going today?”

“Nevada,” she says.

“Ah, sorry, uh, what part of Nevada, sir?”

She winces, but that’s just the reality she’s going to have to live with, and so it’s with gritted teeth that she asks where in Nevada would be closest to the camp that she’s been called to.

The attendant has to look the place up on his phone, but it’s easy enough for him to find their closest service. “Is this for today?” he asks, ready to print her ticket.

She nods, unwilling to speak again.

“Lovely,” the attendant says with a smile, “And thank you for your business!”

He takes her credit card, swipes it, and hands it back over along with her ticket. The bus will take her most of the way there, but the last two or three miles, she’ll have to walk, or hitch-hike, or something. She’ll figure it out.

First things first, though. Her hair will get buzzed at camp - she’s watched enough TV to know that - but first impressions count, so she buys a pair of safety scissors at the newsstand and walks into the station’s clean-ish bathroom.

She hates how she can see a man’s face looking back at her from the mirror.

She can remember the short cuts that she’d worn in the years before, how the air against her neck had served as an omnipresent reminder of the wrongness of the life that she had to live. The thought of returning to that makes her stomach twist and knot, exacerbating the queasiness from the smell of the stall behind her. Growing her hair out had felt like freedom, freedom that had taken her months, years, to attain. 

No matter how long it had taken to grow, the hair is gone in seconds. It’s a couple of passes with the scissors before she holds a bundle in her hand, black as obsidian and thick as night. She turns it over, feeling it brush against her wrist, before letting it fall into the trash, the weight letting it slip out of sight, underneath the wadded, used paper towels that have begun to spill out of the can and onto the off-white tiled floor.

The bus arrives with little fanfare and she’s boarded quickly, taking a seat near the front in the almost empty vehicle. Despite that, she sets her bag onto the aisle seat next to her.

It’s a couple of hours into the trip, once the bus has cleared city limits and is driving through the desert of Southern California, that she’s struck by the enormity of what she’s done. She hasn’t felt this small or this _wrong_ in her skin for years and it’s a couple of minutes before she can remember to breathe, before she can force her brain to expand beyond the, “ _You’re wrong, you’re going to get caught, you can’t do this,_ ” that thunders across every thought. Something has shattered and one reflection has turned into a thousand, all of them screaming at her, until she’s cowering, curled up in her seat and tiny.

She scrambles for her phone, almost calls her father, before remembering that she can’t - she can’t. The thought is sobering; it draws a distance between her and her own brain, and it’s like she’s looking down at herself, rocking slightly and staring at her phone screen. She’s in danger of becoming completely untethered.

There’s a number that she can still call without it feeling like a surrender and she watches herself manipulate the phone with unsteady fingers.

The line rings twice.

“Hi, _halmoni_ ,” she says quietly, shakily.

“Min-Ju,” her grandmother says, “Is everything okay?”

She has to know what’s happened, it’s impossible that she doesn’t. “Are they angry?”

“They’ll get over it. They just want you to be safe and happy.”

Hearing that they were livid, screaming, furious, might have been easier, and Min-Ju can feel the tears welling at the corners of her eyes, threatening to fall. “I’m sorry,” she says thickly, “I don’t want to hurt them, I just- I couldn’t- they wanted to move to Canada and I can’t be responsible for that.”

“It’s not your fault, _gongjunim_ ,” her grandma says, and Min-Ju has to fight back a choked sob at the soft term of endearment, so unlike the harsh desert sun, “You’re doing what you think is best for the family, yes?”

Min-Ju nods before she remembers that they’re on the phone. “Yes.”

“Then go make us proud. I’ll handle your parents, and we’ll all be waiting for you in New Jersey when you get back.”

In the end, it’s almost depressing how easy it is to formally enlist.

“Name?” the guard asks.

She tells him.

“Number?”

She reads it off her orders.

She’s handed a stack of fatigues and a bunk number and pointed towards the nearest clipper-wielding soldier who makes quick work of her remaining hair.

It isn’t until then that she realizes how much she’s been hoping that she’d get caught - that the system would ding and realize that she wasn’t who she said she was, of course she wasn’t, wasn’t it clear that this was a woman claiming to be a man. But she’s made it through, and so there’s nothing else for it but to square the shoulders that she’s always hated for their breadth and march herself and her gear to the appointed bunk.

God, her first day is a _disaster_.

The first piece of the puzzle is the food. She arrives just in time for lunch, which is music to her sorely hungry ears, right up until she realizes that all that’s on offer is mac-n-cheese. 

“Is- look, I don’t want to be trouble, but is there anything else that I could eat?” she asks, looking around.

The guy behind her in line laughs. “What do you think this is? Peter Luger’s? Stop holding up the line.”

And if her stomach hadn’t growled just then, she might have passed it up and waited until dinner, but her hunger wins out over pragmatism, and she piles the radioactive yellow, dairy-filled glop onto her plate.

After ten or so minutes of shoveling pasta into her mouth as quickly as she can manage, she and the rest of the new recruits, some fifty or so bodies, are led to the second piece of the puzzle. It’s an obstacle course, and an impressive one at that. There’s a nearly sheer, nearly featureless wall that they have to scale, ropes that they have to swing across, mud that they have to crawl through.

It’s incredibly intimidating to look at, and not for the first or last time, Min-Ju finds herself wondering if she’s bitten off more than she can chew - maybe she shouldn’t have been so hasty in dismissing Canada as an option.

“Every single one of you will have to run that course in less than thirty-five minutes in order to graduate,” a voice says, and the platoon turns as one from gawking at the wood and rope monster in front of them to the speaker.

He’s Asian, tall and broad, with an impossibly strong jaw and eyes so brown they look black. His hair is definitely not regulation, done up in a neat topknot. “I’m your drill sergeant,” he continues, walking in front of the group. “My name is Li, but you will all address me as ‘Sir.’”

About half of the group immediately respond, “Sir, yes sir!” The sudden noise takes Min-Ju by surprise and she almost jumps.

“Let’s try that again,” Li says, and if the tone of his voice didn’t give it away, the slight smirk playing across his lips is evidence enough that he’s enjoying himself. “My name is Li, but you will all address me as ‘Sir.’”

The whole platoon responds this time, a resounding, “Sir, yes sir!” that Shang full on grins at.

And he’s the third piece of the puzzle, because as much as Min-Ju is gratified at first to see an Asian person in a position of power (and above Drill Sergeant Li, she later learns, is his father, a four-star general) that gratification quickly passes. He’s - and Min-Ju realizes it’s probably part and parcel with the job, but _still_ \- kind of a dick.

He sets them to the obstacle course. He doesn’t even time them. “I’ll be surprised if you finish at all,” he explains, not kindly. “Private Harris! Step to it!”

In his defense, his prediction wasn’t wrong - the course is difficult, and even the recruits who talked big game at first aren’t able to make it all the way through.

“Pathetic,” he barks after Private Green takes a particularly vicious tumble off of the ropes course, “Did they send me their daughters when I asked for sons?”

The day tips from bad to awful when her turn comes. Min-Ju can’t even make it past the second obstacle - a simple set of monkey bars - failing a good deal sooner than most of her peers. Her stomach sinks when she looks up from the dirt to see the drill sergeant walking over to her, and the three-ish quarters of the platoon that isn’t currently engaged on the obstacle course watching him with excitement and fear in their eyes.

“Private Hwa,” he says, staring down at her, “What do you call this?”

And yeah, her response probably would have been sarcastic, verging on snarky, which wouldn’t have gone over too well, but it’s hard to imagine what she could have said that would been worse than what actually happens. Her stomach, assailed by the dairy overload and the brief-but-vigorous physical activity, gives up the ghost, and she lets out the loudest, longest fart she’s ever experienced.

There’s a portion of the platoon that holds out, that manages to stifle their clear and immediate desire to laugh, but the majority are not so stoic, and they burst into raucous laughter, 

Li face has reddened, and for a moment, Min-Ju can’t help but be reminded of the color on her dad’s face when he’s had a cup too many, but it’s barely-withheld anger and not a lack of alcohol dehydrogenase that’s causing it.

When the dust settles, Li's set the whole platoon - those who’ve run the course already and those who haven’t - enough laps that Min-Ju feels like her lungs are made of wood and her stomach has constricted into a tiny, sour ball. Her sides ache, both from the effort and from being “accidentally” bumped into by the rest of the platoon as they run.

Finally, finally, Shang’s had enough and he lets them head off to mess. The platoon walks off on jelly legs, mumbling acridly about the stupid recruit that derailed their first day.

Her stomach is too weak to really hold any food down and she knows she’ll regret that in the morning, but the prospect of showering alone, of putting off having to expose her body to the rest of the platoon by another day, is enough to put her future hunger out of her mind. And besides, it’s pretty clear that she’s no one’s favorite right now and having a moment to herself is something that she desperately, desperately needs.

God, washing her hair is so easy when there’s none of it. But as good as the water feels on her aching muscles, she doesn’t let herself linger any longer than it takes her tears to subside. She’s eager to try to get some sleep and see an end to this awful day; it feels like she’s been traveling for weeks.

She tugs her clothing back on and heads back to her bunk bed, toweling her hair off as she walks. Such is the commotion of the camp that it takes hearing her name for her to realize that some of that sound was directed at her.

“Hey! Hey - Hwa, slow down!” She turns to the source of the voice. He’s wiry, about her height. She remembers him from the obstacle course that they ran earlier that day - he’d done pretty well, finishing somewhere in the top third. He’s also one of the only other Asian bodies in the platoon.

“Hey,” she says, “God, I’m sorry about the running thing, I just- it was mac and cheese for lunch and I just can’t handle that much dairy.”

He flashes her a grin; it’s a little startling just how much of his face his mouth takes up. “Nah, I’m sure he’d have found some other excuse to haze us. I just wanted to say hi, y’know? I mean, it’s fuckin’ wild that you’re doing this, y’know, the other way,” he says, making some broad hand motions that she really isn’t sure how to interpret. 

There are so many thoughts swirling through her head, a sudden riot of panic and shame and fear, and she’s going to have to get better at this, because even with all of that, her first response isn’t to deny the accusation implicit in his words, but to let, “How did you know?” tumble out instead.

“I’m a dragon,” he says, “We’re perceptive and strategic.”

Maybe it’s the shock of having been clocked so abruptly, but the stranger’s words aren’t making any sense.

“I’m nineteen,” he says, in a tone that suggests that he’s trying to clarify someth-

Oh, right. “I’m a tiger,” she says, “God, you’re so young.”

He rolls his eyes. “Okay, grandma. Important two years, huh?”

She shrugs, impressed with her feigned nonchalance given the staccato that her heart is beating out. “A lot can happen in two years.”

He considers this for a second and then grins. “Ya got me there. Mushu, by the way.” He sticks out his hand, but she doesn’t take it.

“Like the pork? You’re joking; that can’t be your real name,” she says without thinking and his expression clouds for a brief, horribly familiar second, before he rebounds, the wide smile stretched across his face once more.

“Picked it out myself,” he says with a grin. “What can I call you? Something tells me that tall, dark, and stick-up-his-ass is gonna be hewing pretty close to whatever’s on his role sheet and I figure it’ll be nice to hear your-” and here, his tone gets very deliberate “real name once in a while.”

There’s a moment of deliberation before she takes the once-more outstretched hand. “Min-Ju,” she says, “My name is Min-Ju.”

Lying down that night, no matter that her bed feels like a cardboard pallet, is heavenly, and she falls asleep quickly, her body too tired for her to dwell on the all-consuming wrongness of the situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kimchi = broadly refers to preserved vegetables, but most commonly to spiced, fermented napa cabbage. Considered the "national dish" of Korea.  
> kimchi jjigae = stew made from kimchi, commonly with added pork belly or tofu  
> hanyak = a traditional Korean herbal medicine taken as a liquid  
> umma = mother  
> maneki-neko = Japanese cat figurine whose beckoning paw is thought to bring good fortune  
> halmoni = grandmother  
> gongjunim = princess


	2. Chapter 2

It’s like painting something from memory, something like, say, the library she went to as a child. It was once intensely familiar - she stayed there after school most nights until her parents got home - but she hasn’t thought of it in years. So she can put the contours onto the page, the glass double doors, the rounded checkout counter, the bright red Exit sign, but it’s not quite right. Was the carpet really that blue? And the fake houseplants, the ones that collected dust, were they in that corner, or the one over there? So yeah, it’s a little like remembering, but it’s a lot more like making things up.

She hates how easy it is to fall back into it.

There was a time, back when she was a teenager, that the idea of being a woman terrified her. There was a performance then, a kind of regurgitation of everything that she had known about masculinity and manhood. She likes to think that she’s doing better than that right now, but honestly, it’s hard to say for sure.

“Sorry about yesterday,” she says, her voice deep and brassy, her shoulders back like she’s auditioning for the role of Superman. “That Drill Sergeant - what a dick, huh?”

The guy she’s talking to - Alan, she thinks his name was - looks at her like she’s told a joke that didn’t land, but nods. “Yeah, he’s uptight for sure.”

“Can’t wait until we get to shoot,” she says, “Guns, y’know?” She mimes shooting a rifle, making enthusiastic sound effects.

Someone else - Eric, maybe - rolls his eyes. “We’ve gotta make it through the physical training first.”

Okay, so maybe her first efforts didn’t go too well, but she’s got nothing but time, and it smooths out. Over the next couple of weeks, the performance becomes easier; she figures out what she has to affect (the walk, the intonation, the eye contact) and what she doesn’t, and it’s not fun, but it’s _fine_. It’s fine.

There are a couple of things that aren’t fine.

One of them is the isolation. Mushu is great, but it feels like he’s only around when he wants to be and otherwise, he doesn’t even exist. It’s hardly enough against the crushing de-personalization that is Basic Training. None of the other recruits talk much to her, perhaps put off by her awkward first attempts at presentation, perhaps afraid that Shang’s distaste for her will rub off on them, but whatever the reason, her dance card isn’t exactly full. A silver lining, maybe, is that the sheer isolation makes it harder for her to feel like she’s becoming a cog in the greater machine that is the United States military than she might if there were actual comradery between her and the other trainees.

Another thing is the pills. As much as the bad training days make her feel like yeah, she could do with a little more testosterone helping her to build up some muscle more quickly, that doesn’t translate to anything other than dull, mute terror at the idea of running out of her hormones. She spends a late night carefully, carefully cutting each pill in half, but the half dose won’t be enough, and even so, she wouldn’t have enough to make it to the end of Basic.

The thought of the pills, slowly dwindling, knots her stomach and ties every free thought she has up in an endless cycle of numbers - twenty pills left, cut in half, forty doses, how many weeks is that? How many days will she have to go without? She hasn’t been without in years; she’s absent minded about a lot of things, about doing laundry, about homework assignments, but never about her pills.

She hasn’t been sleeping well either. She avoids the public showers, opting instead to slip out of the barracks once everyone has fallen asleep and rinse off as quickly and as quietly as she can manage. Her bed smells perhaps a little worse than the others and she spends most of her waking moments feeling like she’s mentally swimming through Jell-O, but it’s better than the obvious result of having to partake in the public showers.

It might be better, but on balance with everything else that she’s got going on, it’s not sustainable. She was never going to be the best at any of the physical aspects of the position, but between the compounding effects of the stress and the exhaustion, it’s possible that she’s getting worse, not better, at them, that the last two weeks have only deteriorated her physical condition. Drill Sergeant Li, at least, has noticed no positive progress, if his continued verbal assaults are any indication.

“My grandmother could do this better than you,” Li barks, curling his lip while watching her struggle through a set of push-ups, as if she’s the only one whose arms are shaking, the only fresh face who can’t maintain a perfectly straight back.

Min-Ju bites back the obvious, “Then maybe you should have drafted her instead,” and only replies with “Sir, yes sir.” Rage gives her the strength she needs to lift herself off of the ground a few times more, but she still falls short of the Drill Sergeant’s expectations.

“A unit is only as strong as its weakest member,” he says, giving her a look.

She’s too exhausted to be politick, so instead of responding, she marches off towards the mess hall bruised, sweaty, and frustrated. She isn’t used to this much physical exertion, not by a long shot. 

Trying to figure out which sports teams would let her play was too difficult, too demeaning, and the thought of trying to change in a gym locker room filled her with sheer terror. The most she did on a regular basis at home was lug the trash bags to the curb and while they could get fairly heavy, that was nothing compared to boot camp.

There are other women around, but they signed up for this. They were prepared in a way that Min-Ju isn’t, and thinks she might never be. She groans as she steps slightly wrong, feeling it in her thighs, her side, feels the exhaustion in her bones, cold and hollow.

“Everything okay MJ?” Mushu appears behind her, watching the way she winces as she steps.

“It’s fine,” Min-Ju grouses. “This’d be a lot easier if I’d actually run the damn mile in PE, you know?”

Mushu laughs, not unkindly. “You’ll get there. Everyone’s sore right now.”

She rolls her eyes. “Easy for you to say, you’ve got, got-” she gestures to him, “Testosterone and shit, don’t you?”

He glances around surreptitiously before pulling up his shirt, revealing a white patch neatly affixed to his lower pectoral. He winks and drops the fabric back down. “Hot blooded man like me? You know I do.”

“I wish I’d had more time before flying out,” she mutters, trying to keep her voice low. They’re nearing the mess and there are more people around, more ears. “I cut all my pills in half but I’m not sure it’ll be enough to tide me over until I can get to a pharmacy before AIT.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous - I’ll introduce you to my hookup, they can get you what you need. Probably.” He says it in such an off-hand manner that it takes a few seconds for the enormity of what he’s just said to register.

“I- what? Really?”

“Wow, you really came out here without a plan at all, huh? ”

“It turns out that they don’t really give you notice that you’re going to be drafted,” she says, her mouth quicker than her brain, which is still processing.

“ _Drafted?_ ” Mushu replies, and she’s gratified for the shock in his voice. “That’s- that’s insane, how did that even happen?”

“It’s some bullshit about looking at birth certificates. What, you thought I volunteered for this?”

Mushu shrugs. “I mean, I did.” He loads a plate high with mushy rice and a pile of greying beans. “Does this look okay to you?” he asks, pointing at the chicken in bright orange sauce.

“I’m hungry enough to eat anything,” Min-Ju admits, dolloping a portion of the chicken onto her own plate.

They eat, separated by a silence that Min-Ju can’t quite find comfortable.She’s too nervous, too concerned that if she says the wrong thing or comes off too strong that Mushu might recant his offer. It’s ridiculous, she knows it’s ridiculous, but when has that stopped her?

“I honestly can’t eat any more of this,” Mushu finally says, throwing his fork down with a clatter. “Do you want to head out? We’ve got some time; we can go meet Crick.”

“Crick?”

“Yeah, I dunno, if you’re cutting pills in half it feels like you should meet them sooner rather than later. They work in the canteen; shouldn’t take too long.”

Min-Ju’s not yet reached her tolerance for the mess food and there’s still room for more, but the prospect of having one fewer thing to worry about, one fewer thing constantly pulling and tugging at her mind, leeching her executive function, is more attractive than the rest of her meal. It’s energizing in a way that nothing has been for the past couple of weeks.

She swallows a half-chewed bite of rice and beans. “Sure,” she says, hoping that it came out more casual than she feels. 

Anticipation sits on her skin, itchy like the sweaters that her _emo_ used to knit for her for Christmas, as they walk. Mushu is walking as languidly as ever, and in this moment, his lack of hurry is torturous.

The first thing Min-Ju notices about Crick is how long their arms are, how gangly they are. Judging by how tall they are, she feels confident that Crick is just as leggy as well. Their uniform is immaculate, and for a moment, Min-Ju has to wonder if they iron it.

“Min-Ju, this is Crick,” Mushu says, reaching across the counter and swiping a Snickers, “I knew them before I signed on; we went to elementary school together.”

“Are you going to pay for that?” Crick asks, irritated. “It’s nice to meet you, Min-Ju.”

“You too.”

“I didn’t get to eat lunch today,” Mushu lies smoothly, “I’ll owe you one.”

Crick narrows their eyes. “You’re a liar. I can smell the grease on you.”

“Yup,” Mushu says, popping the p and taking a big bite of the candy bar.

Crick shakes their head and turns to Min-Ju. “What can I help you with? I mean, other than divesting yourself from this one,” they ask, gesturing at Mushu.

“Uh,” Min-Ju says, wondering how one goes about asking someone to procure something that could get them both dishonorably discharged. 

“Min-Ju needs the same stuff I get,” Mushu says around a mouthful of chocolate.

“The same?” Crick asks.

“Well, the other way around,” Mushu says, at the same time that Min-Ju clarifies, “Two hundred mig Spironolactone and four mig Estradiol.”

Crick’s eyes light up. “Oh, yeah! Absolutely. Come back in three or four days and I should have you covered.”

“What, just like that?” Min-Ju asks in surprise.

Crick furrows their brow. “Uh, I guess you didn’t say please? But I’m not your mom and I’m not really too fussed about that kind of thing.”

“No, I mean, how much are they going to cost?” The

“What will I owe you for this?”

Crick looks at her for a moment, their eyes careful and intense. “You’re alone, aren’t you?” they ask eventually.

“I- what does that mean?”

Crick shrugs. “If you’re here asking me for feminizing HRT, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you weren’t expecting to be here, that you don’t have access to your normal support network.”

The reply dies in Min-Ju’s mouth and she can only shake her head. 

“I mean, I figured, but I’d hoped I was wrong. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. E and Spiro are easy - sourcing T is way harder. We’ve gotta stick together, y’know? Turns out there aren’t a lot of us around here.”

Min-Ju fights back tears for a good five, ten seconds, but her traitorous eyes give way and her only recourse is to lean over the counter and pull a bemused Crick into a tight hug, wrinkling that cleanly pressed uniform and sobbing into their chest.

She feels like she’s floating for the rest of the day and even a particularly dour Drill Sergeant Li can’t take that away from her. She feels ready to fly, like the _ppeongtwigi_ that she would watch at the H-Mart as a kid, the hot sheets of crisped rice zipping out of the press with a sudden pop. 

That night, she allows herself a slightly longer shower, giving herself just a few more minutes to relax into the sense of ease that her talk with Crick had engendered. It’s a luxurious moment, the kind of feeling that would have her drawing a bubble bath at home, but at camp, she’ll settle for just a little while longer underneath the hot water.

She’s just approaching the kitchens on the way back to bed when she hears an unfamiliar sound. In fairness, almost any sound would be unfamiliar at this time of night, between shifts and when the whole camp ought to be asleep. But even so, there’s something very strange about hearing someone from within the kitchens crying.

This is so above Min-Ju’s paygrade and her sense of self-preservation - not to mention the absolute exhaustion in her bones - tells her to keep walking and to pretend like she heard nothing.

Of course, she ignores them and knocks on the door. “Is everything okay in there?”

There’s a fumble from within and a surprised yelp. “I- everything is fine,” the voice says, but the sentiment is betrayed by the way the voice breaks.

“That’s clearly not true,” she says. “Someone told me that a unit is only as strong as its weakest member, so I’m going to come in, okay?”

There’s no response to that, so she takes a deep breath and pushes the door open. It’s a small break room for the cooks, with a creaky table surrounded by a few chairs. Drill Sergeant Li is in one of them, his head bent over the table, held in two hands. There are a few bottles, most of them empty, and she’s not sure whether she’s more surprised that it’s him or that he’s been drinking.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” he says, looking up. His eyes are puffy and red, and there’s still a tremor in his voice.

“So are you, Sir,” Min-Ju replies. “Can I sit?”

There’s a second, and then Li motions to the stool next to him. “You know,” he says, and his voice still sounds so fragile, “You’re the last person I would expect to be here right now.”

“Why’s that?” Min-Ju asks carefully. She takes stock of the bottles - if he’s responsible for all of the empties, he’s gone through six and a half beers. “Don’t think I’m capable of putting one foot in front of the other enough to make it here?”

“No, I just- I figure I’m not high on your list of favorite people. Surprised you’d care.”

She’s not sure how to respond to that, so instead of responding directly, she gestures to the half-full bottle. “Can I?” she asks, more to keep him from finishing it than out of any real desire for it.

“You’re not supposed to drink,” he replies, but he makes no motion to stop her. “It’s not allowed on base.”

“I guess I’ll just have to trust that you won’t turn me in then,” she says, necking the bottle. She feels electric and wary and there’s a tug in her gut like she’s looked down over the ledge of the mall railing and imagined falling.

A silence stretches between them, like a bit of taffy, thinner and thinner, until it eventually, finally, breaks.

“I don’t do this regularly,” the Drill Sergeant says. “I mean, I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“I didn’t assume,” Min-Ju says mildly. She’s lying.

“I just-” he pauses for a second and Min-Ju can tell how carefully he’s picking his words. He’s not sober, inebriated verging on drunk, so it takes maybe a little longer than it should. “My father always expected me to be a certain way,” he says eventually. “When I was growing up, it was always understood that I’d follow him into the army.”

“And- well, didn’t you?” Min-Ju asks.

He scowls. “Here I am. But it’s clear that no matter what I do, I’ll never live up to what he expected. It’s not who I am. I’m a disappointment to him, I can tell.”

“What, because you’re a Drill Sergeant and not a- not a Sergeant Major or something?”

Li shakes his head. “It’s the other way around. I’m still a Drill Sergeant because I’m a disappointment.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“It’s not like he’s said anything, or that anyone’s said anything necessarily, but- I’ve gotten passed up for promotion more than once. It’s deliberate, it has to be.” His voice is getting louder, more heated, as he speaks. “I’m good at this job. I’m so goddamn good at this job and there’s absolutely no reason I should be _wasted_ training a bunch of fresh-faced idiots like this.” At that, all of his momentum comes to a sudden stop and he deflates, sagging a little in his chair. He looks at Min-Ju. “I mean- y’know. No offense.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s one of the least offensive things you’ve said to me so far. Sir.”

Li actually laughs at that. “Okay, fair. I’ve been a bit of a jerk to you.”

“You’re humble, too.”

“Watch it,” Li says, with a sternness that doesn’t quite make it to his eyes, to the quirk of his lips, “You’re really pushing it, Private.”

Min-Ju grins and swipes the last bottle of beer. She twists it open and takes a long drink.

“So what about you?” Li asks, “Do you get on with your parents? How do they feel about you being here?”

She actually thinks about it before answering, partially to decide if she even wants to or not. “They- they’re not so happy about it, honestly,” she eventually allows, “I think they’re pretty disappointed with me too, actually.” She studiously avoids looking him in the eyes, but she can still tell that there’s a moment of conflict within him before he makes a decision.

“Well, after seeing what you call push-ups, I’m not surprised,” he says, but it doesn’t feel mean-spirited the way it has.

She shrugs. “It is what it is. I am who I am and their disapproval isn’t going to change that, you know?” It’s honest enough to be genuine, but measured enough to be safe.

“Yeah,” he replies, and there’s something in his gaze, a warmth, maybe a fondness, that she can’t quite place. “I get that.”

“Do you do this often?” Min-Ju asks.

Li shakes his head. “No, just when my father and I really get into it. Why, are you worried about me?”

“That’s one interpretation. Another is that I’m just trying to figure out when I can snag another beer.” She tips her bottle out over the floor - empty. 

“Have at it,” Li says, gesturing towards the door leading into the kitchens. “They keep it in the back of the dairy fridge. They can’t really report if it goes missing since it’s not supposed to really be on the base in the first place.”

“I appreciate the tip, but speaking of supposed to,” Min-Ju says, “It’s all kinds of late right now and I was supposed to be asleep maybe hours ago. I’ve gotta get my rest or my Drill Sergeant’ll have my ass in the morning.”

Li chokes on air at that remark but recovers quickly, waving her off towards the door. “I’ll put in a good word,” he says, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Min-Ju grins and stands up.

“And- thanks,” Li says as she starts to leave. “I mean, obviously, if you mention this to anyone I will have you court-martialed, but thanks.”

It’s late, so late, by the time Min-Ju finally hits her pillow, but she can’t help but feel like today was an inflection point and that maybe she’ll find some kind of steady state. She falls asleep quickly and for the first time since getting to camp, isn’t plagued by her dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ppeongtwigi - puffed rice sheets. They're eaten as street food in Korea, but in the United States, I've mostly seen them in supermarkets. They're really fun to watch being made! Check it out: https://youtu.be/q1xDNsdrVe4?t=45

**Author's Note:**

> kimchi = broadly refers to preserved vegetables, but most commonly to spiced, fermented napa cabbage. Considered the "national dish" of Korea.  
> kimchi jjigae = stew made from kimchi, commonly with added pork belly or tofu  
> hanyak = a traditional Korean herbal medicine taken as a liquid  
> umma = mother  
> maneki-neko = Japanese cat figurine whose beckoning paw is thought to bring good fortune  
> halmoni = grandmother  
> gongjunim = princess


End file.
